|
|
Post by finsobruce on Jan 3, 2022 10:55:49 GMT
It is incredibly rare that I will defend the Labour Party on anything but I don't think it is fair to accuse them of not caring for the voters of Chelmsley Wood. The Labour councillors who represented the area prior to the Green wave were largely decent local councillors who used their limited influence to ensure that various Conservative administrations pumped money into the area. Also the last time there was a non-Conservative administration the junior Lab partner of the LD-Lab coalition were regarded as the only people in the administration who had a clue what they were doing. Unfortunately while they were decent councillors the Labour group had no experience of competitive elections and were easily swept aside by a loathsome bunch a lying, opportunistic Green scum who are effective campaigners but utterly shit councillors. The people of Chelmsley Wood have been ill served by the dramatic political change of their area. Were you the author of attack leaflets from Labour in Solihull elections past? Because the tone is very similar. Obvs. the attacks were highly effective. As political conspiracy theories go, I think we can rule this one out quicker than most. |
|
|
|
Post by andrew111 on Jan 3, 2022 11:17:25 GMT
I live in Dewsbury these days. Three Dewsbury wards which are a mixture of Asian occupied terraced houses and wwc Council estates, with a few pockets of owner occupied semis and new build detached. Then Kirkburton ward which is a set of villages in nice countryside with one large student village at Storthes Hall. Normally Tory but has had Green councillors and still does at parish level. Denby Dale which is former mining villages now full of M1 commuters, a Lab-Con marginal at local level, but more Con nationally especially now. Finally Mirfield, which is typical Tory suburbia plus the village of Hopton, couple of Labour voting estates and small mill worker terraces. Strong community with big remembrance day celebration etc. 100% Tory town council. No one in Mirfield would accept they have any connection whatsoever with Dewsbury (or Huddersfield). At GE counts they use one set of tables for the three Dewsbury wards and another for the other three, and watching the bundles accumulate looks like two opposing landslides Mirfield Urban District Council by-election Saturday (!) 4th March 1939
Milner Day (Labour) 524 Norman Jenkins (Ind) 485
Labour hold
by-election caused by the death of Cllr J W Jenkins, who had collapsed at a meeting of the Education committee in the previous December and died in late January. He had been a member of the council since 1919 , made chairman in 1937 and had worked for the LMS for 46 years. Only once had he been opposed at election time. Attendance at the funeral included the Borough Surveyor, Mr Trees. Day was like his predecessor a railwayman (fireman to be precise) and had stood unsuccessfully in 1937 and 1938, and Jenkins, secretary of the Mirfield Gas Company was a previous member of the council (1933-6).
In 1933 the town clerk had written to the West Riding County Council to register their opposition to the amalgamation scheme proposed by Dewsbury, and asking for the County Council's support in the matter.
Plus ca change... Mirfield used be a bit of a railway centre and had a thriving canal boat building industry plus some small coal mines. Even now there are significant employers (eg. John Cotton, and Dr Reddy who are contracted to make Sputnik vaccines in India, it seems) so my calling it "typical suburbia" was a bit unfair |
|
|
|
Post by John Chanin on Jan 3, 2022 12:42:24 GMT
Most constituencies, being pretty large with close to 100,000 residents, will have pockets of poverty and wealth. The thing about Meriden (and some of the London seats like Kensington) is the stark opposition between the two, and the absence of the usual mass of people in the middle.
|
|
|
|
Post by michaelarden on Jan 3, 2022 12:45:23 GMT
How about Edinburgh South, South West or North and Leith?
|
|
|
|
Post by islington on Jan 3, 2022 13:04:38 GMT
during the 1997-2005 period, Meriden was the only Conservative seat in the top 50 (I think it was) most deprived constituencies, because, as you say, of Chelmsley Wood. Of course it was very close to going Labour in 1997 IIRC Kensington also scores surprisingly highly on deprivation measures as those not in the middle/upper class majority tend to be very poor. This is correct. Kensington has the reputation of great wealth and this is broadly correct so far as concerns the area around the High Street, Church Street, Queen's Gate and South Ken; but a lot of North Kensington is pretty grim.
The extremes of wealth and poverty are probably greater than in my own seat of Islington South, which I nominated upthread; but in Kensington there is more of a spatial separation between rich and poor, whereas in Islington the two tend to be filigreed together.
Edited to add: I agree with the point made just upthread by John Chanin about the lack of middle-income people. I consider myself to fall in this category, but I think I'm the exception because pretty much everyone I know that lives in the same seat is markedly richer or poorer than I am. And I suspect that mid-income people are in even shorter supply in Kensington. |
|
stb12
Top Poster
Posts: 8,409 
|
Post by stb12 on Jan 3, 2022 13:51:29 GMT
For an example close to myself East Renfrewshire - Newton Mearns and Clarkston very different to Barrhead and Neilston. Eastwood can say more i'm sure |
|
|
|
Post by batman on Jan 3, 2022 14:05:38 GMT
yes, remember that well. Frank White was a very popular constituency MP and kept the swing down to a small fraction; nobody really gave him much of a chance at the time. My cousin voted Labour in Middleton & Prestwich in that election, his first as a voter. My dad remembers the great amusement of having ‘a’ Jim Callaghan as MP for Middleton and Prestwich, who was not the prime minister at the time. Mr Callaghan of course astutely stuck with Middleton which joined with Heywood (a much better fit!) until 1997. Having said that there are also mansions in Norden and Bamford but these are massively outweighed by the towns and H&M going Tory in 2019 is due to brexit, nothing else. Those two wards would have been Tory through the ages anyhow, so not really in this category as much as P&M which as described was a tale of two towns. when Callaghan was elected for Heywood & Middleton, it didn't include Norden & Bamford. These were included in the 1997 boundary changes. I don't think Labour would have lost the pre-1997 Heywood & Middleton in 2019 had it still existed. |
|
|
|
Post by batman on Jan 3, 2022 14:09:43 GMT
It is incredibly rare that I will defend the Labour Party on anything but I don't think it is fair to accuse them of not caring for the voters of Chelmsley Wood. The Labour councillors who represented the area prior to the Green wave were largely decent local councillors who used their limited influence to ensure that various Conservative administrations pumped money into the area. Also the last time there was a non-Conservative administration the junior Lab partner of the LD-Lab coalition were regarded as the only people in the administration who had a clue what they were doing. Unfortunately while they were decent councillors the Labour group had no experience of competitive elections and were easily swept aside by a loathsome bunch a lying, opportunistic Green scum who are effective campaigners but utterly shit councillors. The people of Chelmsley Wood have been ill served by the dramatic political change of their area. Were you the author of attack leaflets from Labour in Solihull elections past? Because the tone is very similar. Obvs. the attacks were highly effective. I have read some ludicrous comments on this site in my time, but quite possibly the idea that Richard Allen would compose Labour Party leaflets tops the lot |
|
|
|
Post by Adam in Stroud on Jan 3, 2022 14:25:00 GMT
Were you the author of attack leaflets from Labour in Solihull elections past? Because the tone is very similar. Obvs. the attacks were highly effective. I have read some ludicrous comments on this site in my time, but quite possibly the idea that Richard Allen would compose Labour Party leaflets tops the lot Apart from anything else, if he did they'd be virtually unprintable. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 3, 2022 15:51:34 GMT
Both Swindon seats - rural villages, deprived industrial centre and well-off suburb all pushed together.
Bedford contains areas in both the most and least deprived 10% of England, with the western half being almost uniformly poorer than the eastern half.
Crawley also shows an aesthetically pleasing east/west split in its local electoral maps
Banbury - farmland, wealthy commuters and Banbury council estate all in one seat
|
|
|
|
Post by bjornhattan on Jan 3, 2022 15:53:21 GMT
Most constituencies, being pretty large with close to 100,000 residents, will have pockets of poverty and wealth. The thing about Meriden (and some of the London seats like Kensington) is the stark opposition between the two, and the absence of the usual mass of people in the middle. Using deprivation figures makes it possible to quantify this. Constituencies which are as you describe will have many residents in very deprived areas, but also many residents in the least deprived areas. So I downloaded the data and worked out the proportion of each constituency in each deprivation decile, and identified those which were most polarised.
By this measure, Meriden is far and away the most disparate constituency in England. Every way I analysed the figures it came out top, and that applied whether looking at overall deprivation or focusing on income.
Many of the rest of the top 10 have already been mentioned - they were: Weaver Vale Ellesmere Port and Neston Bury North Newcastle upon Tyne East Bristol North West Keighley Basildon and Billericay Blyth Valley Bristol West
Kensington was somewhat odd - only number 16 overall, but second when just looking at income. The problem seems to be that the overall deprivation figures take things like pollution and crime into account, which means even very affluent parts of central London are very rarely in the lowest deprivation decile. And of course, the other problem with this analysis is it won't show up constituencies which are polarised in other ways, such as Birmingham Hodge Hill.
|
|
|
|
Post by owainsutton on Jan 3, 2022 16:00:21 GMT
Most constituencies, being pretty large with close to 100,000 residents, will have pockets of poverty and wealth. The thing about Meriden (and some of the London seats like Kensington) is the stark opposition between the two, and the absence of the usual mass of people in the middle. Using deprivation figures makes it possible to quantify this. Constituencies which are as you describe will have many residents in very deprived areas, but also many residents in the least deprived areas. So I downloaded the data and worked out the proportion of each constituency in each deprivation decile, and identified those which were most polarised. Visualised here (England-only): |
|
|
|
Post by owainsutton on Jan 3, 2022 16:02:26 GMT
I have read some ludicrous comments on this site in my time, but quite possibly the idea that Richard Allen would compose Labour Party leaflets tops the lot Apart from anything else, if he did they'd be virtually unprintable. He'd spell 'Labour' correctly, though, which would be an improvement. |
|
|
|
Post by andrewp on Jan 3, 2022 17:17:52 GMT
What’s the opposite to the question in this thread? Which constituencies are the least disparate or most uniform? Somewhere in London Commuter land in Brent or Harrow or a peripheral Liverpool mostly Council estate seat like West Derby perhaps? Or Castle Point?
|
|
|
|
Post by mattbewilson on Jan 3, 2022 17:23:16 GMT
East and West split is quite common. In Sheffield the life expectancy if you get on a bus in Southey Green that terminates in Totley jumps by 9 years.
|
|
|
|
Post by John Chanin on Jan 3, 2022 17:37:03 GMT
What’s the opposite to the question in this thread? Which constituencies are the least disparate or most uniform? Somewhere in London Commuter land in Brent or Harrow or a peripheral Liverpool mostly Council estate seat like West Derby perhaps? Or Castle Point? Rayleigh and Wickford would be a good bet. |
|
|
|
Post by minionofmidas on Jan 3, 2022 18:15:04 GMT
It is incredibly rare that I will defend the Labour Party on anything but I don't think it is fair to accuse them of not caring for the voters of Chelmsley Wood. The Labour councillors who represented the area prior to the Green wave were largely decent local councillors who used their limited influence to ensure that various Conservative administrations pumped money into the area. Also the last time there was a non-Conservative administration the junior Lab partner of the LD-Lab coalition were regarded as the only people in the administration who had a clue what they were doing. Unfortunately while they were decent councillors the Labour group had no experience of competitive elections and were easily swept aside by a loathsome bunch a lying, opportunistic Green scum who are effective campaigners but utterly shit councillors. The people of Chelmsley Wood have been ill served by the dramatic political change of their area. Were you the author of attack leaflets from Labour in Solihull elections past? Because the tone is very similar. including the 'incredibly rare' line? That'd be a funny leaflet. Seriously though, I've no opinion on the quality of Chelmsley Wood's current representation and would not find it remotely unusual if Richard is entirely correct. (It's not because they're Green votes, it's because they're desparate votes for some, any non-big3 alternative.) He's also not actually contradicting what I was trying to get at. |
|
|
|
Post by batman on Jan 3, 2022 18:17:10 GMT
What’s the opposite to the question in this thread? Which constituencies are the least disparate or most uniform? Somewhere in London Commuter land in Brent or Harrow or a peripheral Liverpool mostly Council estate seat like West Derby perhaps? Or Castle Point? Barnsley Central, Tottenham or Rotherham on the one hand, Fylde, Poole or Windsor on the other, would all be decent examples, though there are plenty more. Harrow W isn't a bad shout (Brent N slightly less so). Liverpool Walton is also very uniform, if anything even more so than West Derby. |
|
|
|
Post by finsobruce on Jan 3, 2022 18:18:44 GMT
East and West split is quite common. In Sheffield the life expectancy if you get on a bus in Southey Green that terminates in Totley jumps by 9 years. Which suggests worrying things about the bus service in Sheffield if nothing else.  |
|
|
|
Post by relique on Jan 3, 2022 18:43:24 GMT
I could try and tell you of dozens of French constituencies but I guess that would be quite boring and I will only tell you the one I will vote in june: Nord 9th.
It was designed in 2010 by a right wing MP and junior minister, Alain Marleix.
It drowns two historically popular Lille neighbourhoods (Saint-Maurice-Pellevoisin, recently taken over by gentrification and giving the Greens a majority in the recent local elections; Fives, less gentrified, where I live, and where socialists and greens got the same number of votes in mayoral first round election) into a very very bourgeois and right-wing set of cities with Bondues, Mouvaux (both part of what is called the BMW triangle with Wasquehal which concentrates the wealthiest of the wealthiest of the northern region of France), Marcq-en-Baroeul and the south of Tourcoing. It is quite an absurd redistricting as there was no need to have Tourcoing (92000 inhabitants) and Lille (233000) in the same constituency. There really are no link between the two parts.
|
|
